Cultivating beginner’s mind, running fast experiments, collaborating beyond silos, and learning to disrupt yourself are essential.In exponential times, serial reinvention is required to survive and stay relevant.

Mindset for the New Normal

Disruptors should start niche, perfect the model, identify barriers incumbents face, then rapidly scale up. They should take advantage of incumbents' paralyzed denial to establish market dominance quickly before responses come.

Strategies for Disruptors

Big bang disruptors are innovators that enter the market all at once with something so new and revolutionary that it disrupts the entire industry.

In fields prone to big bang disruption, pursue careers resilient to sudden industry change. Seek transferable skills, creative roles, emotional intelligence and abstract expertise less vulnerable to disruption.

Implications for Careers

<ul><li>Incumbents struggle to respond quickly to big bang disruptors due to structures like cost focus, process rigor, and conventions.</li><li>Their operations excel at slow, linear innovation but falter amid exponential digital change.</li></ul>

Why Incumbents Struggle to Respond

<ul><li>Regulators struggle with big bang disruption.</li><li>Flexible policies sustain exponential innovation while limiting harm.</li><li>Outdated regulations hinder progress and get outpaced by change.</li><li>Policymakers must adapt too.</li></ul>

The Role of Regulation

"Big bang disruption" happens when digital innovators leverage new technology to rapidly introduce revolutionary new offerings, devastating incumbents who are unprepared. It is sudden, swift and disruptive on an industry scale.

Recognizing Big Bang Disruption 


<ul><li>Incumbents must disrupt their own business models through careful but rapid pivots.</li><li>Leverage existing strengths like resources, while freeing creative teams from constraints.</li><li>Iteratively test multiple small-scale projects.</li></ul>

How Incumbents Can Pivot

The book Big Bang Disruption by Downes and Nunes analyzes how innovation happens lightning-fast in the digital age, overturning incumbents overnight. It provides strategies for both disruptors and incumbent firms.

It used to take years or even decades for disruptive innovations to dethrone dominant products and services. But now any business can be devastated virtually overnight by something better and cheaper. How can executives protect themselves and harness the power of Big Bang Disruption? Just a few years ago, drivers happily spent more than $200 for a GPS unit. But as smartphones exploded in popularity, free navigation apps exceeded the performance of stand-alone devices. Eighteen months after the debut of the navigation apps, leading GPS manufacturers had lost 85 percent of their market value. Consumer electronics and computer makers have long struggled in a world of exponential technology improvements and short product life spans. But until recently, hotels, taxi services, doctors, and energy companies had little to fear from the information revolution. Those days are gone forever. Software-based products are replacing physical goods. And every service provider must compete with cloud-based tools that offer customers a better way to interact. Today, start-ups with minimal experience and no capital can unravel your strategy before you even begin to grasp what’s happening. Never mind the “innovator’s dilemma”—this is the innovator’s disaster. And it’s happening in nearly every industry. Worse, Big Bang Disruptors may not even see you as competition. They don’t share your approach to customer service, and they’re not sizing up your product line to offer better prices. You may simply be collateral damage in their efforts to win completely different markets. The good news is that any business can master the strategy of the start-ups. Larry Downes and Paul Nunes analyze the origins, economics, and anatomy of Big Bang Disruption. They identify four key stages of the new innovation life cycle, helping you spot potential disruptors in time. And they offer twelve rules for defending your markets, launching disruptors of your own, and getting out while there’s still time. Based on extensive research by the Accenture Institute for High Performance and in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, and executives from more than thirty industries, Big Bang Disruption will arm you with strategies and insights to thrive in this brave new world.

LARRY DOWNES

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